The economic enclaves that are being built across South India would appear to exemplify what Aihwa Ong has called ‘neoliberalism as exception’. Drawing on fieldwork in and around one ‘special economic zone’ in the state of Andhra Pradesh, this article critiques the language of exceptionality by exploring the structural continuities and dynamic interconnections between the zone and what continues to be called the ‘informal economy’. Rather than valorize India’s economic zones as manifestations of a juridical-discursive ‘exception’ in which the state experiments with alternative forms of market-oriented rule or as carceral spaces in which working populations are subjected to innovations in bio-political government this article shows how these zones formalize conditions of precariousness and political subjectivity that already characterize working life in much of South India, incorporating social networks and livelihoods that extend beyond their walls.
This article explores what anthropology has to say about contemporary business strategies for market expansion among poor consumers in Africa and Asia. Focusing on the activities of global consumer goods company Unilever in India, we show how anthropology can provide valuable insights into the hidden work and power relations involved in transforming an everyday commodity like soap into a composite object, what we call a ‘social good’, that is capable of simultaneously combating disease, tackling poverty and realizing value for shareholders.
At the end of 2010, the British Museum unveiled the final artefact in their exhibition ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’: a portable solar-powered lamp designed for and sold to people living without access to mains electricity in Africa and Asia. Solar-powered lights have become iconic objects of social entrepreneurship in Africa and Asia and this article explores the work involved in producing them as humanitarian goods. Following the 100th object from its conception in a Stanford University classroom to points of sale and use in rural India, the article explores how it has been made to materialise both an ethic of care and an ethic of commercial interest. Drawing from traditions in the social study of technology and the conceptual vocabulary of Michel Callon, the author argues that the significance of objects like the ultra-affordable solar lamp lies in their capacity to make and define markets at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’.
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